In the winter he sports a sturdy wool felt hat, which was ideal for mounting LEDs. He picked up a basic LilyPad Arduino that uses a small LiPo battery as its power source, mounting it inside the hat with a bit of glue. He wired up a series of SMD LEDs around the perimeter of the hat which blend in quite well in the felt, leaving them nearly invisible to the naked eye when powered off. When he flips the LilyPad on however, there’s no missing the bright blue LEDs nor the music emanating from the tiny speaker he also mounted in the hat.

We think that [Marco’s] display is great, and if we were to build one, we would likely include a copious amount of red and green LEDs in ours. Do any of you take your Christmas light display on the go? We’d love to see them, so be sure to let us know in the comments.

Wow, what a coincidence! I just got back from the inaugural run of my Christmas LED hat (it drew compliments from no less than five different people). I took a set of battery-powered Christmas LEDs from CVS (purchased on sale for $.99) and wired them to a custom ATtiny13 circuit that I mounted inside an Altoids tin. I then taped the lights inside the brim of a Santa hat. The lights can be enabled in four different modes, under the control of a simple push button. The final report can be seen on my blog: